The Mourner

     
       The soft mist graduated into a steady drizzle as he staggered through the cemetery gates. Leaden clouds added gloomy undertones to the weeping firmament while the lampposts on the street corners below did little to pierce the heavy eventide blackness in which the whole of the city was immersed. The lone figure, clad in ivory vesturement with a rain-dotted fedora hiding dark, searching eyes continued through the churchyard. His fingers grazed the tops of the tombstones as if he sought from them some support lest his agitated legs suddenly give way. In the dim light he careened about urgently seeking one stone --one name in the dark-- with a fierce desperation bordering the rim of hysteria. The frenzy ceased abruptly as his right hand brushed the edge of a glistening new tablet. His fingers trembled as he sank to his knees upon the fresh grave, tenderly tracing the chiseled letters forming the name, "Anna."
         In painful remorse, his gaze lowered like that of a humiliated schoolboy, as if the name was a face into whose eyes his shame forbade him to look. Gathering his courage, he forced his head up to again bring his gaze to the inscription. With quivering fingers he touched the etching on the face of the stone. Shaking with emotion, a husky sob escaped unwarranted through his parted, trembling lips. He inhaled sharply, refusing to let go of his breath in a desperate effort to contain the volcanic magnitude of the grief swelling within him. His clenched fist flew to his chest, his lungs aching for release from their oppression. As his vision blurred with unbidden moisture, the agonizing reality of emotional defeat by his own merciless sorrow tore open his grief-riddled throat in an excruciating cry: "Dad-gone it, Annie!"
      With this, the poor one slumped hunching forward almost prostrate before the stone with his arms wrapped tightly around himself as great, disconsolate sobs emitted from his crouched form. Ebony tendrils slipped from under his hat, softly caressing his cheek while catching in their ends bitter tears of mournful brokenness. Raindrops splashed ever in abundance, bathing all in a chilling evening shower. Here in lonely emptiness the city slept with neither thought nor care for the anguish of the linen-clad griever as ragged, compuntious laments escaped from his throat as unreservedly as the moisture spilling from both the heavens and his eyes: "Should have...told... her. I...I...don't know...why...dad-gone it, Annie...Wh-why, baby? Nobody...ever...sh-showed her...about...u-us...don't know...why...I never...t-told...her..."
        In woeful penitence, the mourner wept on as each second before the wet, glistening stone added to the crippling guilt of promises dishonored and secrets held too close. These inflamed the raw wounds of festering sorrow that the merciless, sword-bearing hand of undue death had ripped through his soul. The magnitude of his suffering rested as a heavy burden on his shoulders, threatening to crush him under its weight. He reeled in shocked grief as though his heart was bleeding out the last of its vitality having been pierced through by the vicious stab of regret.
     "F-forgive me, Annie," he heaved. "Darling, I can't bear it. I can't bear it! Oh, Annie forgive me!" The tears did not cease; they were an overflowing cascade relentlessly pouring from the deluge of unforgiving sorrow threatening to drown him. His hands could still recall the silk of her hair laced between his fingers as he had cradled her ever-chilling corpse. Fresh drops of blood pooled on the carpet had seeped through his pant leg, staining his bent knee. Street lamp beams dueling the moonlight on the glinting shards of window glass sent flecks of gold and white light splattering against the walls of her apartment.
      His shock had stolen his words, for all the speech his throat had bidden him was the tiny phrase that had first tumbled from his lips when his slight frame charged through her door having dashed through the alley back from whence he had come as the cry of his beloved -- his Annie -- had entered his ears. His dark eyes had flashed half-crazed with worry searching the apartment for the source if not also the cause of the scream. His voice had arisen in a pleading cry, posing the one question for which the whole of his being desperately depended an answer: "Annie, are you okay?" Silence. Again, louder, "Annie, are you okay?" Still nothing. Or was it? Could it be -- was that -- a moan? He sprang from his place in the doorway, tearing through the room into her sleeping quarters.
     There on the bedroom floor she lay, a crimson stream slightly ebbing from her lips between the bruises undoubtedly inflicted upon her by the brutish intruder. He had struck her -- unashamedly beating the poor creature without mercy -- then vanished into the night, leaving her to die. His hands trembling, the midnight-haired paramour slid his arms under the woman, tenderly cradling her fragile frame against his heaving chest. Shock weighted down his jaw in a horror-striken gape. Her head lolled toward him, colliding with his breast, leaving a trail of scarlet drops on his lapel. A tiny glimmer of moonlight caught her cerulean pupils gleaming between her barely cracked eyelids as she released a ragged, shallow breath.
     "Annie?" he whispered hoarsely, his voice tempered with the fear that she would not answer. "A-are you okay?" She raised her gaze, searching for his eyes with what little was left of her strength. "H-he...came...for....m-me," she gasped, fighting through each syllable. Overwhelmed with emotion, he crushed her to himself in an impassioned, yet gentle embrace. His neck constricted in longing to say more -- to give her more than this -- but, his words caught in his throat as though his vocal cords had been knotted, rendering him painfully speechless.
        She faltered, moaning softly, then spoke again, her voice only a wisp of failing energy, "I tried...to get...a-away...from him...under...the t-table." Through trembling lips, she choked out the account of the intruder, his entrance through the window, and his vicious thirst for her blood as the color finished draining from her features. Her body sagged in his arms as her breathing took on a sudden shallowness that had not been there before. The ivory-clad one tenderly cupped his hand under her jaw, turning her ashen face toward the moonlight. Her eyes were closed now, her strength barely enough to accommodate the rising and falling of her chest. He bent low, gathering the will-power to force himself to speak, though the shock and horror of the scene before him still seemed to grip him in an unrelenting choke-hold.
     "Annie," he murmured brokenly, his lips brushing against her cheek, "Please, dearest, don't leave me." Gathering a shaky breath, her eyes opened once more, this time filled with tears as her gaze met that of her beloved. Her slender fingers trembled like leaves in a windstorm as she touched his face. Her lips parted, beginning to contort in the shape of his name as her gaze flickered from a look of agony to one of peaceful affection. Her voice caught in her throat, then escaped in a deep, final sigh as her eyelids flickered shut.
     "Annie? Are you okay? Annie!" He thrust his head to her chest, but the only beat that echoed in his ears was that of his own pounding heart. Frantically, he pressed his mouth over hers, his tongue tasting the blood on her lips as he exhaled. Again and again, he tried desperately to bring her back, forcing his own life into her lungs as though she would return to him if he was diligent enough. Alas, it was to no avail; the delicate hands would no longer weave themselves into his locks in passionate adoration, nor would the sweet lips share with him tender kisses. She had been snatched from a warm, beautiful life and forced along the final journey by death's icy hand, leaving him cruelly alone, lost, and cold.
      A low rumble of thunder crept behind the sky, a foreboding prelude to the storm preparing to strike the old city. The rain had ceased for the moment, as though in preparation for what promised to be a rousing encore. The tombstones glistened from the impromptu bath the drizzle had afforded them as the mourner, drenched and shivering, slowly rose from the place that his knees had furrowed in the freshly turned dirt before the grave. His tears had desisted with the rain, though his eyes still held in them the unmistakable exhaustion and swollen weariness of spent grief.
       He stood in silence before the tomb of his beloved, his large hands hanging limply at his sides. Summoning a deep breath, he leaned forward, caressing the top of the stone. His eyes squeezed shut in anguish, "Anything, Annie," he whispered. "I would have given anything." His fingers fell away from the tablet, as he slowly turned away. He lifted his gaze forward, facing the cemetary gates as he stepped closer to them. Another rumble of distant thunder sounded as a biting wind began to rush through the streets.
        He paused as he reached the gate, just one mere step from reentering this evil, cruel world by which he had lost so much. He looked back, gazing at her grave. "Soon," he murmured, his voice low yet resolute. "I'll not fail you, not again." Rain began to spit from the clouds, a final warning before the impending deluge, yet the lone figure paid no heed. "I'll find him, Annie. I'll find him. I promise you."
        He pulled his hat low over his face and turned up his collar. A flash of lightning lit the sky, announcing the official arrival of the storm -- it had not ended with initial downpour as some had hoped and predicted. No, it was not over, on the contrary, it had only just begun.

The End.